Abraham Grapheus

Abraham Grapheus

Cornelis de Vos was a renowned portrait artist. This particular portrait of
Abraham Grapheus was one of his first great achievements. He painted it when he held the
position of dean of Antwerp’s guild of St Luke. Grapheus, too, was a guildsman. As he was not a
particularly accomplished artist, he fulfilled a mainly administrative and organisational role: he
kept the guild registers up to date, informed the guildsmen about each other, organised auctions of
estates of deceased members and took care of the table service at the patron festival. De Vos
depicted him as an old man with a staring gaze, deep wrinkles and grey curly hair. Hanging around
his neck is a so-called ‘breuk’, an ornamental chain with silver plates representing the guild of
St Luke. One of the plates features the head of an ox, symbol of St Luke, another represents the
Guild’s coat of arms. The chalice in Grapheus’s hand bears the portraits of four legendary
painters:
Apelles,
Zeuxis,
Raphael and
Albrecht Dürer, all of whom were important role models to the guildsmen of St
Luke.

Stolen silverware

During the Napoleonic occupation (1794 – 1796), the French transferred numerous artworks from
Antwerp to Paris. In 1815, many of these pieces, including this portrait, were returned to the
museum of the Antwerp Fine Arts Academy, the precursor to the Royal Museum. Unfortunately, the
precious silverwork rendered so accomplishedly by De Vos in this portrait was never
returned.